‘Fainting?’
‘Yes . . . and they kept that fire going all that evening and into the night, with one bloke tending it and separating the bones from the rest, and he kept saying to us, “This is what happens if you grass.”’ Liz Petty paused. ‘So that’s why there’s no old statements from this girl, darling, I don’t want that end. I don’t want my bones to be put in a cardboard box and given to Pearl’s husband to be dropped in the river.’
‘Her husband?’ Yewdall queried.
Petty took another sip of her vodka. ‘One evening, Pearl was having a real bitch with the guy, telling him what a wimp he was, “You really are, Des, you’re a proper wimp. You turned out no good, you’re just not up to it any more, no bottle at all”, and how “Father” would have been ashamed of him. So, Pearl, the woman who slapped Sandra Barnes, was the wife of Des, who I also heard being called “Desmond” by another of the geezers.’
‘That’s interesting.’ Penny Yewdall looked at Liz Petty. ‘Very interesting. They were keeping it in the family.’
‘Seems so. So, Des, or Desmond, the coach driver, was given the box of bones and told to tip them into the Old Father. He must have driven away in a motor because the coach didn’t move. So he would have found a bridge and into the river they went, somewhere quiet,’ Liz observed, ‘can’t see him tipping them off Tower Bridge, but upstream where the Thames is narrow and there’s small footbridges. I’d have gone there if I was him.’
‘Fair enough.’ Penny Yewdall sat back into the bench seat which ran along the wall. ‘That would make more sense.’
‘So, the next old morning I was on swimming pool cleaning with Sandra Barnes’ Tom . . . or her ex Tom, barking at us like he was a sergeant, “I want it scrubbed sparkling and I mean sparkling”, throwing his voice, making it echo round the empty swimming pool, but not shouting.’
‘Projection.’ Penny Yewdall smiled. ‘It’s called projecting your voice.’
‘Well, he projected it all right, “Any of you what don’t give a hundred and ten percent just isn’t going home. We’ve had one fire, we can have another” . . . Ah . . . yes.’ Liz Petty put her glass down. ‘He said, “It’s a deep river, plenty of room for your bones as well”, so that is when I knew where Des had tipped the bones, in the Old Father, but not exactly where.’
‘All right.’ Yewdall paused. ‘So you remember Sandra Barnes. Do you remember any of the other women?’
‘Just Davinia.’
‘Davinia?’
‘Yes, she wasn’t a brass. She was like Sandra, a rich man’s mistress, and, like Sandra, she only found out where her old man got his dosh from the hard way.’ Petty shrugged.
‘Do you remember anything about her?’
‘She was a bit posh. She had her rent paid for by her man in return for “benefits”. She and I were washing up once – we liked washing up because there was food to be pilfered – and we talked about making a run for it, but we decided against it. The garden was fenced in with twenty foot high wire fencing and the front was guarded by dogs. We were barefoot; the only phone in the house was fixed to take incoming calls only and it never rung, not once. So we decided that we just had to stick it out. Probably a good job we did, because that was just before we saw those two guys murdered. They would have made a right example of us if we had run for it; four bodies on the fire, not two.’ Liz Petty rolled a cigarette. ‘So I’m here, still alive, still kicking. I survived.’
‘Do you,’ Penny Yewdall asked, ‘recall anything about Davinia?’
‘Full of regret, full of shame, full of guilt, blaming herself for being stupid. She kept saying, “I am so stupid, stupid, stupid. How could I have got caught up in all this?” I remember she came from Reading.’ Liz Petty laid the roll-up on the table. ‘Her father was a solicitor and her mother was a clergywoman, a curate, I think she said. I don’t know what a curate is but it’s something to do with the church.’
‘It’s all right.’ Yewdall smiled briefly. ‘We know; it’s like the bottom rung of the hierarchy. You start as a curate and end as an archbishop . . . but that’s helpful.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Yes, not many clergywomen in the Church of England in Reading with a daughter called Davinia and whose husband is a solicitor.’ Penny Yewdall took out her notebook and wrote her telephone number on a blank page, and then added ‘Penny’ beneath it. ‘That’s my phone number.’ She handed the notepaper to Liz Petty. ‘The last number is actually a “one”, but I wrote “seven”, as you see. You have to remember it’s a “one”. That number could make things difficult for you if the wrong people find you in possession of it.’
‘OK.’ Liz Petty read the number then folded the piece of paper and put it in her handbag. ‘Thanks. Oh, I remember that Pearl’s brother was one of the gang.’
‘Her brother?’
‘The one man who she showed any time for, and just about the one man that had any time for her. They were like husband and wife, and after Pearl had that bitch against Desmond, the bus driver, she said, “At least I have a brother who’s got the bottle it takes, if I haven’t got a husband with it”, and then she added, “He even calls you ‘Mr Harley’; his own brother-in-law . . . he calls you ‘Mr Harley’. That says it all . . . it says it all.”’
‘Again, how interesting that is.’ Penny Yewdall smiled. ‘How interesting. It really was all in the family, but listen, Liz . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Just think about the offer of witness protection. We can use you in the witness box and you can use a fresh start. Arnie Rainbird can make people disappear but so can the police, though not in the same way, of course.’ Penny Yewdall reached for her handbag. ‘I promise, no one will find you.’
‘You can really do that?’
‘Yes, we really can.’ Penny Yewdall stood. ‘We both benefit. Can I buy you another drink before I go?’
‘Yes, thank you. I’ll go outside and smoke my fag, but another drink sounds good.’ Liz Petty fumbled in her bag for her cigarette lighter. ‘I’ve got some thinking to do. A new start, what street girl wouldn’t want that?’
‘It was all so, so silly, so very, very, silly . . . the waste . . . so silly.’ Diana Wortley placed her aluminium walking stick to one side of her legs and looked down at the carpet. Beside her was a small table on top of which were plentiful bottles of tablets and bottles of medicine.
It was tragic. Vicary read the cluttered room. Here, he thought, was despondency and here was life’s unfairness. ‘It was not silly, Miss Wortley, it was a tragedy.’
‘No . . . no.’ Diana Wortley shook her head. ‘It was silly, take it from me, Mr Vicary. It was very silly, very stupid youthful silliness which led to the tragedy, and without the silliness there would have been no tragedy.’ Diana Wortley had a thin, wasted frame, her face was drawn, her eyes sunken. ‘He was going to be a people’s lawyer, so he said, not a rich man’s lawyer; that was young idealist Daniel. He wanted to champion the underdog and because of that he felt he had to rub shoulders with the East Enders. How could he represent them, he would say, he would ask . . . how could he represent them if he didn’t understand them? So he’d take me drinking in pubs down the Mile End Road, and in Stepney and Whitechapel. He was such a naïve idealist, poor Daniel. You know you don’t have to know what someone smells like if they don’t wash or change their clothes for three days in order to represent them. Lawyers argue points of law. They can prepare their case from documents and photographs. A lawyer need never even meet his client, but Daniel didn’t see it that way. Anyway, he eventually got into a fight; looked at someone the wrong way or something.’
‘Which you saw, I presume?’ Vicary asked.
‘No . . . well, apparently . . .’
‘Sorry? I don’t understand. “Apparently” you saw the fight?’
‘Yes, apparently.’ Diana Wortley forced a smile. ‘I recall sitting in the pub; the next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital, shaking like a leaf, but even n
ow I don’t remember anything of the in-between. I had . . . I still have what I understand is called “Hysterical Island Amnesia”, HIA for short. I sustained no injuries, no bang on the head – which can also cause island amnesia; no physiological reason for it, so it’s all in the mind. I am the classic hysterical female. And then on top of that I go down with multiple sclerosis.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘That’s life. You didn’t have to look very hard to find me, did you? I was living with my parents when Danny was murdered and I am still living with my mother; Father died a few years ago.’ Again she forced a smile. ‘Some life, eh?’
‘Again,’ Vicary replied, ‘I am sorry. I wish I could do something.’
‘Thank you, anyway. So I was unable to tell the police anything and I still can’t tell you anything. I attended the trial of Arnie Rainbird, I went each day with Daniel’s parents and it all hinged on whether Danny had a weapon in the form of a broken bottle and was threatening Rainbird with it. The prosecution said that Danny had dropped the bottle and was offering no resistance. And in a pub full of men, only one stepped forward and gave evidence against Rainbird, confirming that Danny had dropped the bottle well before Rainbird stabbed him. The jury found against Rainbird and he went down for life, for murder. He was a brave man . . . I mean the man who gave evidence. He was very brave. Arnie Rainbird’s conviction was later overturned on appeal, but he was still convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter. I believe he’s out of prison now, only served ten years. The manslaughter charge meant he could apply for an earlier parole.’
‘Yes,’ Vicary replied, ‘that’s the way it works.’
‘So, he’s picking up the pieces of his life, he’s rescuing what he can and Daniel is in the soil . . . it is so unfair.’
‘You can’t leave a man alone, can you?’ The woman spat the words. She was short, with dark hair – clearly had a fiery temper.
‘It’s just a friendly chat,’ Swannell replied in a calm, soothing voice.
‘Very, very friendly,’ Brunnie added. ‘Just couldn’t be more friendly.’
‘And if he doesn’t want to chat you’ll be back with a warrant,’ the woman snarled. ‘I know how you work.’
‘Yes, possibly,’ Swannell continued to be calm. ‘We could do that but we’d rather not.’
‘Let’s keep it unofficial,’ Brunnie added.
Arnie Rainbird then appeared behind the woman and stood staring at the officers. He showed himself to be tall, well groomed, clean-shaven, with cold, piercing eyes, and wore blue jeans and a blue T-shirt. He was lean and muscular; his physique had benefited from prison life and he hadn’t let liberty soften him. ‘I was expecting you,’ he announced speaking in an East London accent. ‘Snakebite phoned me.’
‘We thought he might,’ Swannell replied.
‘You knew he would, more like.’ Rainbird stood in the doorway of his home, which the officers found was a solidly built Victorian house set in its own grounds in Hertfordshire, and they knew not a brick of it had been bought using honest money; all on the back of ruined lives; all purchased with the money used to purchase heroin before the present source of income derived from human trafficking. ‘You’re just putting the frighteners on me.’
‘Sorry you feel like that, Arnie, but it’s really just a social call. We just wanted to introduce ourselves.’
‘We’ve been asking a lot of questions about you, Arnie,’ Frankie Brunnie added, ‘so we thought we’d come and meet you; put a face to a name and all that.’
‘So you can go now,’ Arnie Rainbird snarled, ‘you’ve put a face to a name; you needn’t stay here, you’re wasting space.’
‘Things might get a little more serious, Arnie. You have read about the bones being found in Ilford a few days ago?’
‘Yes, so what?’
‘They belonged to Convers and Tyrell, but Snakebite would have told you that so the “so what” doesn’t cut much ice.’
Arnie Rainbird remained silent. He was stone-faced.
‘The gofer who was supposed to drop the bones in the river,’ Swannell explained, ‘well, he had other plans didn’t he?’
‘In fairness, the bones were not intended to be found until we were all well into the next world, but a geezer got drunk and rammed his vehicle into a brick wall, and out popped a note telling us where the bones had been buried,’ Brunnie explained. ‘And here we are.’
‘And here we are,’ Swannell repeated. ‘Very creative all round; getting battered, then drowned, then their bodies burnt to reduce them to bones. If they did go in the river they would never be found, but the gofer, he was creative as well, and like we said, here we are.’
‘We are learning about the party to celebrate you getting out,’ Swannell continued with a smile, ‘a garden party . . .’
Arnie Rainbird continued to remain silent.
‘Lots of lovely witnesses,’ Swannell said, ‘mainly brasses, but not all, scared into silence, but it’s the old elephant in the room number.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, if something is so huge, so monstrous, it is sometimes easier to ignore it, but the nature of elephants in rooms is that over time they get smaller. With every day that passes they get a little smaller, they pygmify, and they pygmify, until they get small enough to recognize, and then they get talked about, and after seven years the goings on at your coming home party are now small enough for folk to talk about them.’
‘Like who, who’s talking?’ Arnie Rainbird’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the front door of his house.
‘Can’t possibly tell you that, Arnie.’ Swannell grinned. ‘That would be telling, but there were a lot of girls there who were all free agents, not part of any crew. The fear you had them in is wearing off. Do you know where they still are? Girls move from drum to drum, get married, change their names; just move on in life and leave the street. We are investigating a double murder, Arnie, it won’t be manslaughter; you won’t be getting out in ten years, not this time. This time you’re going back for life.’
‘I was fitted up for that last charge, that boy in the pub.’
‘You knifed him.’
‘I may have . . . I may not have, but the rat who gave evidence against me, he wasn’t even in the pub.’
‘So how did he know what happened?’ Brunnie asked. ‘He had to be there.’
‘He was primed, your lot primed him, told him what to say. We knew him, he was a blagger and he was looking at eight years for armed robbery so he gave evidence. The charges against him were dropped and he vanished . . . police witness protection.’ Arnie Rainbird eyed Swannell and Brunnie coldly. ‘You won’t be doing that to me again. You won’t be fitting me up again.’
The whirring machine which kept the lungs of Charlie Magg’s latest and possibly last victim inhaling and exhaling and kept his stomach supplied with liquidized food was, in an atmosphere of sorrow and solemnity, switched off. The supervising physician said, ‘All right, it’s done. Somebody call it.’
‘Eleven fifty-six in the forenoon.’ Staff nurse Bridie O’Driscoll ‘called it’ in her thick Irish accent upon consulting her watch, which hung upside down on the left side of her tunic. She thought as she called it that the decision to switch off the machine and thus terminate the wretched man’s life was a decision which was taken none too soon. It always had, in her opinion, been hopelessly optimistic to think that the patient could ever recover, and if he did regain consciousness he would never be anything more than a vegetable. The physician pulled the bed sheet over the man’s face. ‘I dare say that makes it a murder now. I’ll notify the police.’
Tom Ainsclough tapped on the door frame of Harry Vicary’s office. He held a manila file in his hand and, Vicary thought, he looked worried.
‘Do you have something, Tom?’ Vicary put his pen down and reclined in his chair. ‘Come in . . . take a pew.’
‘Yes . . . yes, sir. I’ve been following the paper trail like you asked me to, digging up
what I could about who I could.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, sir, I confess I am a bit worried.’
‘I thought you looked troubled. Do sit, please.’
‘It appears that there was once a crew called The Whitechapel Fleet.’ Tom Ainsclough slid into a chair in front of Vicary’s desk.
‘Fleet?’ Vicary smiled. ‘As in a fleet of ships?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It’s a good name for a gang,’ Vicary commented.
‘Yes, I thought so too, sir.’ Tom Ainsclough also grinned briefly. ‘But it’s really the only thing that is amusing.’
‘Oh?’
‘The chief of The Whitechapel Fleet was a fella called Eddie Fretwell, aka “Slick” Eddie to his mates, and “Slimy” Eddie or “Slimy” Fretwell to his enemies. It seems that he was a sort of eye-on-the-main-chance individual, out for himself all the time and would sell anybody out to save his skin, hence “Slimy” Fretwell or “Eddie the Slime”, another name he acquired.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, “The Fleet” cruised Whitechapel and were not on good terms with Arnie Rainbird’s crew, and they each had recognized territory with The Fleet being the smaller of the two outfits.’
‘OK . . . I follow.’ Vicary picked up a ballpoint pen and began turning it over and over in his hands.
‘They avoided all out war,’ Ainsclough explained, ‘because The Fleet were still in the middle of the twentieth century; strong arm boys blowing safes, stealing wages and bulldozing their way into jewellers’ shops, whereas Rainbird’s team had got into illegal substances and then into people smuggling. So they didn’t like each other, but at the same time they didn’t tread on each other’s toes.’
The Garden Party Page 19